The Supreme Court of the Netherlands has decided that pension rights cannot expire, in the ruling of an appeal brought forward by Pensioenfonds Vervoer, the Dutch pension fund for the public transport sector.

The fund had appealed against an earlier court decision in favour of a member, who had been a mandatory participant of the scheme. During the period from 1 January 1988 and 15 January 1995, the employer, bus company Nederlandse Autobus Maatschappij (NAM), has deducted the member contributions from the worker’s pay, but has not made any contributions for this employee to the industry-wide pension fund.

In 2002 the employee requested the pension fund be granted pension rights for the period 1980-1995. Pensioenfonds Vervoer stated it honoured this request “as a gesture of goodwill”, but only for the period after November 1989 as it felt the pension rights for the period 1988-1989 had expired. However, the cantonal court has ruled this to be untrue, which has now been ratified by the Supreme Court.

The fund failed to make inquiries into why NAM had not paid the required premiums, even though it had known the employee was a member of the scheme, the Supreme Court said. It therefore ruled that the risk of non-payment lies entirely with the pension fund.

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